Free Writing-A Great Tool for Students

What fifteen-minute ungraded activity can promote better test scores? There are many answers, but today’s focus is a quick five-minute free writing activity followed by a short discussion. According to a study by Drabick, Weisberg, Paul, and Bubier (2007), students who participated in free writing about the course content did better on multiple choice exams than those who were not part of the study. In addition, students attended class more often.

Photo Credit

Richard Day, in his article “Two Writing Activities for Extensive Reading,” says that having students extend the free writing to a slightly more advanced timed repeated thinking and writing provides three benefits. Students can have a starting place for their writing, they improve their writing fluency, and the instructor has a better insight to the students’ reading. Imagine having your students write for a few minutes each day about what they read or what they heard during the last class period. It would be easy to find out if they are keeping up with the class. As Day says, “If they have not read a book, they will have little, if anything, to write about.” This is equally true for those who haven’t attended class, or have not paid attention.

Focused free writing is probably more beneficial for most courses, but if you’d like to try free writing that isn’t focused on your course topic, go to Creative Writing Prompts, where 346 topics are ready for your use. If you are in a computer room and want to control the free writing time, you might want to have students use this site to write their ideas.

While most instructors don’t have the time to free write in every class, adding this to your class activities would be useful to students. Focused topics could help students think about what is discussed in class, and could help them on their exams. As you’re planning next semester’s classes, think about adding this beneficial activity.

Note:  Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, there will be no blog entry next week. See you in December!

Yes! Text in Class!

  If you have teenagers at home, you know that their cell phones are used as watches and as texting devices. Occasionally, they're used as  phones, if they have to talk to you, the parent!  In that respect, our college students are not much different than younger teens.  There are few students who do not have cell phones in class, and they use them to text.  If you want to read more about cell phone use at every age, you might want to read an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal, called  Y U Luv Text, H8 Calls, by Katherine Rosman.  Obviously, texting is here to stay, at least for now, so, let's join the party!

  One way to put the cell phones to good use in the classroom is to use Poll Everywhere. As the name implies, Poll Everywhere is a polling system that can be used for quick interactions.   Poll Everywhere is free for a group up to 30 people, and can involve your students and let them use their cell phones at the same time.  Poll Everywhere can be at as a quick substitute for Clickers, which have become more popular in our classes. 

  Once students have texted their answers, either from their cell phones or computers, you can show the results live via the Internet or a PowerPoint slide.  An Internet connection is necessary for this, of course.  The following video gives you an overview of how easy it is to use Poll Everywhere.



There are a couple of limitations to Poll Everywhere.  It seems that you can create just one question at a time, but you can quickly move from one question to another.  Also, students must have access to a cell phone or computer connected to the Internet to participate. 

Poll Everywhere is something I think would be a good ice-breaker at the beginning of class or a quick wake-them-up activity after 20 minutes or so of lecturing.  Students could also create test questions for the their classmates to answer.

Once you've tried Poll Everywhere, comment on the blog so we can learn from your experiences.

Have a great week.

Inspiring the Love of Learning in Today's Student

Blog note:  Today's guest blogger is Margie Nelson.  Margie is an Assistant Professor of English at the Valle Verde Campus.  If you'd like to discuss teaching and learning as a guest blogger, feel free to contact me at jrudnick@epcc.edu. 

by Margie Nelson

At this year's Southwest Seminar, I was lucky enough to attend the “Inspiring the Love of Learning in Today's Student” session. Instructors from various disciplines and different colleges shared their techniques and ideas for inspiring the love of learning in our students.



Photo credit 

 After an in-depth discussion, our group organized our numerous ideas into two major categories. The first category, Connecting with Students Early and Often, included ideas that stressed the importance of appropriately showing students your “human” side, making students feel invested in the course, and demonstrating the course’s relevance to students’ lives and “the real world.” Some specific examples include a math instructor bringing in a utility bill to demonstrate equations, an accounting instructor sharing his academic and work history with students, an information technology instructor comparing computer programming to everyday “programming,” and a writing instructor using email assignments to show audience.

The second category, Strategies to Motivate Learning in Class and Beyond, was comprised of strategies that instructors had successfully employed to motivate students’ learning in class and life-long-learning (LLL). Some specific examples include reminding students about their motivation for being in class (even if the course is a degree requirement), requiring or encouraging students to publish their work on the web (such as EPCC’s Borderland’s Project), involving students in professional associations and conferences, and appealing to students’ personal interests while developing their technology skills with biographical assignments on the web (such as using Microsoft’s Photostory software program).

Discussing and sharing techniques with such passionate instructors inspired me. I want to thank all of the instructors who participated and shared their excellent ideas and to El Paso Community College, Central New Mexico Community College, and EPCC’s Faculty Development Office for an enriching seminar. Motivating students to love learning is a legacy we can pass on to our students. Yes, it can be a challenge, but this invaluable legacy is worth all the hard work.

Do Your Students Read the Textbook?

  When I started the semester, I made sure that students knew they didn't have to purchase a new textbook.  I told them they could rent a book, buy a used book, or purchase chapters from the publisher's website.  What I may not have made clear, however, is that they should read the book.  When I started discussing the first exam, I suggested to the students that they should be reading the chapters.  I warned them that what I talked about in class was just a part of the information they needed for the test.  For over a week, I asked them how their reading was coming along.  Perhaps you can guess the results.  Many students waited until a couple of days before the exam to read the book, and missed many details.  The resulting test scores were miserable.

I hate to see students do poorly on exams, so I took the opportunity to research a bit to see what I can do to help the students read their assignments.  My research took me to the Association for Psychological Science Teaching Tips.  In her article about using textbooks effectively, Denise  R. Boyd provides a number of ideas that I might use in my classes to promote the reading of the book.



Photo from http://collegexperience.net/

 Boyd says that in her classes, she explains that lectures will be more interesting if she doesn't have to provide a list of items that they could read themselves. 

Boyd also uses the text in class.  Instead of putting up a PowerPoint slide of a graph, she directs the students to open the book to the graph.  Some students may feel uncomfortable and feel like they are missing something, so they bring their texts to class.

Another idea of using the textbooks is from  Barbara Gross Davis, University of California, Berkeley.  Her article, Motivating Students, is reprinted here.  In the article, Davis provides an example from J.W.Daniel (please see article for full citation).  The professor that Daniel refers to gives an assignment for the next class.  At the start of that next class, he has students give him a notecard containing information from the reading, such as definitions, or key ideas.  The professor collects the cards and returns them to students a week before the exam.  At that point, students can add information, apparently during class, but then must turn in the card to the professor.  The professor returns the cards on exam day for students to use. According to Daniel, "this faculty member reports that the number of students completing the reading jumped from 10 percent to 90 percent and that students especially valued these...cards."

I have used something similar in my classes.  I let students bring a 4 x 6 "cheat sheet" for their exams.  They can write whatever they want on the cards. It's amazing how much they can fit on a card.  My rationale is twofold.  First, it forces the students to use the text to create their exam card.  Second, I think it lessens the urge to cheat.  My results have been mixed.  Unfortunately, the grades aren't very high, but they don't cheat!

What are your tips for encouraging students to read the text?  Post them in the "Comments" section, and let's see if we can get a discussion going.

The next post will be in two weeks and will focus on information learned from the Southwest Seminar.  See you then!

Stumble

In my Internet travels, I run across many websites.  Some provide me with research, some inspire me, and some are just for fun.  I often choose to use one of my favorite websites, StumbleUpon, to find things I may not have found using more traditional search engines like Google.  I've checked boxes on the website to show StumbleUpon what type of things I'm looking for.  According to the StumbleUpon website, there are almost 500 topics from which to choose.  The topics range from the serious to the ridiculous.  I have selected educational topics to my list of hobby and humor topics to justify my surfing existence. 

You can stumble in two ways.  The first way is to search from the website.   The second way is to download the toolbar.  You can't do this at work, (of it you can, it's frowned upon), but feel free to do it on your home computer.  You do have to sign up so that your topics can be remembered, but it's free. Once you're registered and have decided on your topics, start clicking on the "StumbleUpon" button. 

You'll notice a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" on the site.  If you like the page you're visiting, you can save it by clicking  "I like it!."  Likewise, if you don't like the content of a specific webpage, you can click "thumbs down," so that site is no longer in your mix of searched websites.

StumbleUpon is unique because it is a social website.  According to doshdosh.com, "Users can also use the Stumble Upon toolbar as a form of social bookmarking. By surfing the web and tagging or submitting specific websites, each user can keep track of which websites they like and share it with others."  If you find a website that isn't already part of StumbleUpon, you can click "I Like It!" and it will become part of the network of websites that others will be able to view.

Although it seems like it might be a total time-waster, depending on what you choose as your topics, Stumbleupon can produce very interesting results.  By using this toolbar, I have found great recipes, topics for classes, and I've also had some fun along the way. 

Give StumbleUpon a try.  I'll warn you, however, it's like candy corn.  You'll want "just one more," and may end up clicking the night away.

See you next week!

Wordle Words

The focus of the EPCC Faculty Development  blog as determined by Wordle.net

As you may have figured out, I am a computer addict.  Each and every night, I am on the Internet.  I have some sites that I look at every day, such as Facebook and hobby sites, and others that I find through the use of Stumbleupon or blogs.  One interesting site that's popped up from time to time is Wordle.net.  Wordle takes written information and determines the most common words and presents them in a visual format.  It's been around for a couple of years, and is an interesting concept.  The image above was created from the this blog's posts since its beginning.

In addition to being an interesting visual, Wordle does have some applications for the classroom.  Although some of the ideas are for younger students, some can also be used for our college classrooms.  Jonathan Wylie in the article "Top 10 Ways to Use Wordle's Word Clouds for Classroom Lessons," gives examples of the uses of Wordle.  A few of the more useful ideas are summarized below.

Idea 1:  Students can examine historical speeches to see what words are most often used.  It would be interesting to see if there is a change in themes of presidential inaugural speeches from one era to another.  Text can be copied and pasted into Wordle, so there's no need to retype something you can find on the Internet. 

Idea 2:  At the beginning of the semester, many instructors require students to present a short speech about themselves.  If students write a few paragraphs about their interests and then paste it into Wordle, they can then bring their printed word cloud to show what's important in their lives.  By the way, you can save the Wordle word cloud by using the "Print screen" key, pasting it into Photoshop or other photo editing program and then saving it as a jpg.  It's not difficult, but does take a few steps.

Idea 3:  The final idea comes from the edublog article "Ways to Use Wordle."  The author, soulcradler, suggests having students use Wordle to edit their writing.  The student can copy his or her paper into Wordle and then analyze the word cloud to see if there are any overused words or phrases. Soulcradler says, "This might help them avoid cliches and search for new vocabulary to express their ideas."

Wordle is a fun idea, and could bring a change of pace to your classroom. 

See you next week!

Millennial Students-How Do They Want Us To Teach?

Last week, I wrote about five of the eight characteristics of Millennial students as identified by Alicia Moore.  In this blog post, I'll provide the rest of the characteristics and then raise questions about  how and if we can or need to accommodate this generation of students.

Characteristic 6:   Millennials are service oriented. According to Moore, this is true in two areas.  First, millennials volunteer more than previous generations.  They are involved in various aspects of their communities.  Second, millennials expect good customer service.  They want accurate information and know that they can go to different sources, if necessary, to get what they need.  This applies to colleges, as these students want information available to them 24/7.

Characteristic 7:  Millennials are time managers and are structured.  These individuals have been put on schedules their whole lives.  As children, they had music lessons, went to soccer and basketball practices, and played games on the weekends.  Because of their high involvement, they needed to learn time management.  They listened to their parents and those in authority about how their time should be spent.

Characteristic 8:  Millennials are protected.  As discussed last week, these students have their parents to watch over them.  Rules such as zero tolerance are a part of this generation, not allowing any negative experiences for the youths.

Like any generation, Millennials' characteristics can affect their college learning. Christy Price of Dalton State College surveyed her students and wrote about their ideal learning environment.  In her article "Why Don't My Students Think I'm Groovy?:  The New R's for Engaging Millennial Learners", Price says her students' most consistent theme when talking about learning is that they want a variety of teaching methods.  They don't necessarily dislike lectures, but want to participate in the classes.  They also want relevant examples and expect multimedia to be used.

Photo from http://whatitsayswhatitmeans.blogspot./
com/2009_04_01_archive.html

What are your opinions?  Should we change to become more "Millennial Friendly?"  What do you do to reach your Millennial students?  Your comments are welcomed!

Have a great week!

Today's Millennial Students

Today's student-how are they defined?  The focus of the Southwest Seminar's for Great Teaching focuses on that question.  How are students different than those of other years?  As you know, today's students have been defined as millennials-those students born between 1981 and 1999.  Today's college freshman who just graduated from high school was born in 1992.

As with any generation of students, millennials have characteristics that differ from other generations.  Today's blog post will focus on five of these characteristics,  and next week's post will add three more to the list.  A later post will focus on how we might want to change a few things to accomodate our students.

Alicia Moore in her article, "They've Never Taken a Swim and Thought about Jaws:  Understanding the Millennial Generation,"  goes into quite a bit of detail about the characteristics of the Millennial generation.  I'll summarize her points here and next week, but if you have time, you might want to read her article.

Characteristic 1:  Millennials are diverse.  This group is ethnically and racially diverse.  In addition, there are more females than males enrolled in higher education.  These student accept cultural differences more easily than previous generations, and have more support for gay and lesbian relationships. 

Photo from thehammockssouthside.com

Characteristic 2:  Millennials are pressured to perform.  From early on,  millennials have been told they need to do well to be successful.  Even playing hours of video games has taught them that a lot of hard work and hours will get them to the next level.

Characteristic 3:  Millennials are ambitious achievers.  This group of students has taken AP classes and many have plans for advanced degrees.  According to Moore, these students are also team players, since they received trophies for participation as well as winning in their young lives.

Characteristic 4:  Millennials are confident and optimistic.  This is the generation that has seen tremendous growth in technology and inventions.  Being smart is not considered a weak point; being "geeky" may be seen as a favorable characteristic. 

Characteristic 5:  Millennials are team oriented and connected.  As mentioned in the third characteristic, millennials have been part of teams for most of their lives.  In addition to the team aspect, this group of students is close to their parents.  According to the College Board, the parents are dubbed "helicoper" parents because they "hover over their children, swooping in to fight their battles and make their decisions for them."  (The College Board article gives some good reasons for being a helicoper parent.)

As you read through the list of characteristics, think about your students.  Do they exhibit behaviors that reflect these characteristics?  Do you related well to their points of view? 

Next week, I'll provide the remaining characteristics and provide expert's suggestions on how to be the professor the millennials relate to.

Have a great week!

Cell Phones and Texting: A Retention Solution?

EPCC and other colleges are always concerned with student retention. Georgia Gwinnett College is no exception. The college is similar to EPCC in that they have noncompetitive admissions. In recent years, they found that their retention rate, like many noncompetitive admissions colleges, was not as high as they would have liked. So they implemented a solution that is, so far, unlike others. According to Inside Higher Education, August 19 edition, they gave each instructor, both full-time and adjunct, a cell phone. The college encourages faculty members to respond to texts and phone messages within 24 hours or one business day.

The college does not require office hours, but does have the faculty members leave their phones on during certain hours. According to associate professor Kristina Watkins Mormino from Georgia Gwinnett College, faculty set up parameters in their syllabi. She says “…a student calling will not reach me at 2:00 some Saturday night. That student can leave a message and can be sure to hear back from me by Monday afternoon.”

The cell phone availability, along with mentoring and smaller class sizes, has been successful. The retention rate for returning sophomores was 75 percent, almost double that of similar colleges in Georgia (Inside Higher Education, 2010).

So would this relatively new idea work here at EPCC?  Do you give your students your home phone number? Cell number? Do students bombard you with calls at all hours of the day and night? This semester, I decided to give this experiment a try. I went to Google Voice and obtained a free phone number that is different than my home and cell number. This is the number that my students receive, along with my office phone number. I can have the Google number ring to any phone-my cell, home, or office. I’ve chosen my cell, because I wanted to give them instant access. I told the students about my new experiment, and they were happy to try it out with me. I entered their cell phone numbers and then texted each student, welcoming them to class. I could text them by typing the message on a computer rather than on a phone (which is much faster than using my phone), and just had to cut and paste for each student. It didn’t take very long, although, admittedly, I am experimenting with a small class. I chose to text rather than call or e-mail, because research at Ball State University has shown that 97 percent of college students text and it is their favorite way to communicate.

Photo from injuryboard.com

Since the first week of classes, I’ve received messages from almost half of the students. A couple of students texted back right away, just affirming that the system worked and that they thought it was “cool.” Other students have texted about the correct edition of the book, letting me know they were ill, asking for clarification of assignments, and letting me know they would be late to class. One student texted that I was gorgeous-a message intended for his girlfriend-but it led to a great discussion about their futures and being careful with messages that are sent. The students have texted during the day and at night, but I haven't been bombarded or texted after 8 p.m.   Texting is the only way these students have communicated outside of class.  They have never called my office phone nor have they been to my office. I think it will be a great tool for my students to contact me and for me to contact them to remind them of upcoming exams and assignments.

By using Google Voice, I can set the incoming calls to go directly to voicemail if I’m in a location that doesn’t lend itself to the beeps that accompany my texts or if I am off-hours. The best part of using Google Voice is that all of the messages, both voice and text, are transcribed and kept in my Google Voice account. If a student and I discuss an issue, I have a record of it if I need it. (By the way, I’ll give a workshop on Google and its many components for the Spring Faculty Development Week.)

What are your beliefs about using texting and/or cell phones to communicate with students? Your comments are welcomed.

Using Prezi in Your Classroom

PowerPoint has been a staple in college classrooms for more than a decade.  The slide-by-slide bulleted lists are familiar to students everywhere.  PowerPoint can be effective, but it can also get a little stale.  If you want a change in your presentational repertoire, there's a fairly new free presentation program online that can be used to add a little more pizazz to your lectures.

Prezi is a zooming presentational tool that is great for both linear and nonlinear information. As Denna Jones in her guest column in Professionally Speaking stated, "Think of it [Prezi] as a dynamic canvas that can move in a multitude of directions, and not (as with PowerPoint) just forwards and backwards."  Prezi is a way to present information in a nonlinear way.  The following Prezi presentation by Adam Somlai-Fischer shows the dynamic capabilities of using this program.

Why should you move beyond slides? on Prezi

Moving back and forth from one idea to another is one of Prezi's strengths. Unfortunately, if you move too quickly, your audience could become seasick, so layers and smaller movements are recommended. It's easy to add media to your presentation, too.

If you're interested in trying something new this semester, take a look at Prezi. Their website has all the information you need, including presentations that others have created to share. Give it a try!

Class Participation

When I was in graduate school, one of my professors had "Participation" as part of the grading criteria.  He was a well-known book author and expert in his field and I was very intimidated.  I remember answering a question and watching him open his notebook and jot something down.  I puffed up a little, sure that I had received high participation points for my answer.  Unfortunately, I never found out whether my answers received any points or if the participation points actually counted for anything in the final grade.

At the beginning of the semester, it's a good time to take a look at what we are requesting of our students.  Does your syllabus have a graded "Participation" section?  There is nothing wrong with grading class participation, but it is one area that is often left unexplained.  How do the students get graded for the participation?  Exactly what is participation? 

Educator Chrisopher Willard has discussed class participation in his article "Reconsidering Grading Students on Class Participation."   In his article, Willard states, "I thought that a student’s verbal participation was a matter of just trying and I would call on them in my attempt to help."  It didn't turn out that way.  He further states, "The significant question that arises is this: If I am grading on participation, what am I doing to teach this skill? Or contrarily, how can I grade what I do not teach?"

Some educators have been more specific about teaching and evaluating class participation.  Martha L. Maznevski, when at the University of Virginia, wrote an article titled "Grading Class Participation" for a Teaching Resource Center publication.  She said that in work situations, the way to "evaluate performance on the job is to develop a set of behavioral indicators of good performance specific for a given job."  Giving credit for classroom participation should be no different.  In her article, she provides a scale that can be used for students' participation, which might be helpful to you.  The top score requires that the student sythesize and evaluate, part of Bloom's taxonomy of learning objectives.  By providing behavioral indicators, students are aware of what they need to do to receive certain points.

To some extent, our college classrooms have become what James Ricky Cox calls the "youth soccer phenomenon."  Like children receiving a trophy for trying, our students may think they deserve higher grades simply because they've attended class or said one or two things while in class.  If class participation is not defined and no specific rating system is given, our students may fight for a higher grade simply because of the vagueness of the situation. 

It's something to think about as you begin your semester.

It's All Worthwhile

As the end of the semester approaches, we are often inundated with students asking for extra credit or the chance to make up a missed assignment.  Some students want "A's" when their work is not deserving of that grade.  At times, the end of the semester is like the end of a plane ride.  You know you're going to land, but it's not always a smooth finish.

But then, it happens.  A student from the past comes back, either by letter or in person, to thank you.  This is exactly what happened to Professor Thomas Enriquez this week.  One of his former students sent him an invitation to her graduation from the University of Texas at Dallas.  She attached a note thanking him for inspiring her to continue her education and preparing her for her major.  He said, "It makes it all worthwhile."

And so, as the semester winds down, let's try to keep our eyes on the prize.  Those students who come by tomorrow checking their grades may be the same students who come by to say "Thanks" in the future. Teaching touches lives, and we're lucky to be in the position of shaping those lives for years to come. 

Happy Finals Week.

Helping Students Succeed (Part 3)

The final installment of a discussion of Jillian Kinzie’s Occasion Paper, “What Faculty Members Can Do” focuses on the final three areas of promoting student success. If you’ve missed the previous six, you might want to either scroll down to previous entries or read through Kinzie’s article.

The seventh idea is to “Weave diversity into the curriculum.” This includes providing diversity in out-of-class assignments. Kinzie states that students “who report more exposure to diverse perspectives in their classes are more likely to report higher levels of academic challenge, greater opportunities for active and collaborative learning, and a more supportive campus environment.” Although many of our students are not financial able to travel very far to observe other cultures, they can learn from their own classmates. Many of our students have traditions and cultural aspects that are unique.


The EdChange project titled “Critical Multicultural Pavilion: Awareness Activities,” provides activities and exercises that bring diversity discussions into the classroom. Two categories, icebreaker and introspective activities, provide various levels of discussion.

The eighth idea to improve student success is to “Make time for students.” We as faculty members are required to have office hours, but we often sit alone waiting for our students to come and chat with us. Kinzie suggests collecting e-mail addresses and letting students know about upcoming events. EPCC’s SmartStart or a class Facebook page can be used as a classroom communication page. Letting students know you are available and willing to meet or exchange e-mails with them can make the difference between a successful student and one who falls through the cracks.

The final idea that Kinzie proposes is to “Hold students accountable for taking their share of the responsibility for their learning.” One aspect of holding students accountable is discussed in the book Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors by Linda B. Nilson. An excerpt from the book shares four ways to hold students accountable for readings required in the class. Not surprisingly, these are homework, quizzes, in-class problem solving or written activities and giving oral performances or answers about the material. Once the student knows that the instructor will check to make sure they are meeting standards, they may be more willing to do the work.

Although we often think of student accountability solely in terms of grades and classroom performance, Kinzie also talks about student involvement in committees and the campus governance. Those who are involved are more likely to be successful.

Student success is important to not only the student but the college as well. Having our students successfully working in the community with the label of “EPCC Graduate” will make everyone proud.

Helping Students Succeed (Part 2)

In the previous entry, I discussed the occasional paper entitled “What Faculty Can Do” by Jillian McKinzie. While I stated that there were six different things faculty can do to help students become more successful, there are actually nine. Today I’ll discuss three more ways to help students. If you haven’t read the first three, you might want to scroll down to read about them.


The fourth item in McKinzie’s article is to “use engaging pedagogical approaches appropriate for course objectives and students’ abilities and learning styles.” As discussed earlier, part of the idea of getting students involved is to teaching according to their learning styles. But there are other approaches to use to keep students involved and successful, too. One way is to promote Service Learning. According to the EPCC Service Learning site, “Through Service Learning students can apply newly-acquired academic skills and knowledge to address real-life needs in their own communities and reflect on the meaning of this service.” Many students learn more from doing something that reading about it. Service Learning gives them a great opportunity to apply what they are learning in class in a concrete way. Contact EPCC’s Service Learning facilitators for ways your students can benefit.


Other ways to engage students are to have study groups, peer tutoring both in and outside of class, and collaborative learning.


The fifth way McKinzie says faculty can help students succeed is to “build on students’ knowledge, abilities and talents.” In jest, we may say that our students don’t have knowledge, abilities, and talents, but of course they do! Community college students often come to our classes with a wealth of information gleaned from their life experiences. They know what it’s like to live and work with a variety of people. Unfortunately, many of our students also know what it’s like to live close to violence. Their knowledge of the world can provide interesting additions to our class discussions.


Our students probably know more about technology than most professors, and we can use that knowledge to help develop better methods of collaboration, such as the use of wikis or Facebook. Students often have hidden talents that may help them be successful students, and our job is to draw out those talents so they can be used.


McKinzie’s sixth way faculty can help students be successful is to “provide meaningful feedback.” Providing detailed constructive criticism is beneficial to the students, and of course more meaningful than just a grade without comments. Giving students a high grade if they haven’t deserved it doesn’t provide them with information for their growth, either. If you’re an instructor reading and grading multiple papers, grading seems like a never-ending task. That may indeed be the case, but each student deserves to know what he or she has done incorrectly and how to fix it. The key is to guide the student. There may be internet sites, writing centers, tutoring, and peer evaluations than can also provide guidance. Continuous improvement should be the goal.


The final blog entry on this Occasion Paper will take a look at the final three items McKinzie says faculty should do to help students succeed. Helping our students is not just our job-it’s our duty.

Helping Students Succeed (Part 1)

In her Occasional Paper, “Promoting Student Success: What Faculty Members Can Do,” written in 2005, Jillian Kinzie discusses six ways faculty can help students succeed. These suggestions are based on the National survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The first suggestion is to embrace undergraduates and their learning. Collaborative learning and learning communities and “engaging pedagogies” are included in this suggestion. Setting and maintaining high expectations is the second suggestion offered by Kinzie. If we limit students based on the belief that they can’t reach a higher level, they never will. We need to allow them to achieve as much as they can with a push to “higher-than-average expectations.

The third suggestion is to clarify what students need to do to succeed. One professor, Dr. John Toothman, in his article “How to be a Successful College Professor” discussed what it was like to receive a paper with a big “F-“on the front of it. The professor giving the grade did not provide any constructive feedback and would not go through papers with students. John had no way of knowing what to do to get a better grade. While I am sure no instructor at EPCC would behave in such a way, we may be less specific in our guidance than we could be. According to Kinzie, “Do not leave students – especially newcomers – to discover on their own what it takes to be successful. Become familiar with and promote the available academic and social support resources such as writing centers and tutoring support programs.” A tour of the various writing centers, Tutoring centers, PASS programs, ESL Labs, and others may help in steering the student in the right direction.


I find that our students really don’t know how to study. They look over the book and notes the night before the test, and often rely on the outlines that were given to them in PowerPoint presentations given in class. They may not understand that the exams are not likely to be straight from class notes, and are not likely to be exams that look only at identification rather than the understanding of ideas and concepts.

The Student Academic Resource Center at the University of Central Florida has an inventory of college level study skills that gives student feedback in the areas of text reading notetaking, test pre, concentration, memory and time management. Students can put “MCLCW Seminar” as their advisor so that they can receive results. Study skills handouts, located at the left side of the webpage can then help students become more proficient in their weaker areas. This may be an inventory that you direct your students to throughout the semester.


Helping students succeed should be more than our jobs; it should be our passion.  The next blog article, after spring break, will focus on the next three things faculty members can do to help their students succeed.   Enjoy your spring break!

Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism is one problem that affects almost all academicians. We write our policies and warnings in our syllabi, yet we still get papers that we know are not the student’s work. Then we spend time googling phrases that may direct us to the original source and discuss with the student why he or she is receiving an “F” on the paper. Part of the problem may be the students don’t really know what plagiarism is and isn’t. Students may turn in work they think is OK because they’ve changed a few words in the original text, or they may site a source in the paper and feel that this allows them to use anything from that source for the rest of the paper.

In the January 26 issue of Inside Higher Education, Scott Jaschik discussed a study done by Thomas Dee and Brian Jacob. The study showed that students who received a tutorial about plagiarism were “less likely to plagiarize” on their papers (Jaschik, 2010).

If you want to teach your students about plagiarism and how to avoid it, you might want to start with the tutorial and quiz from the Plagiarism Resource Site. The information on this site was also used by Dee and Jacob in their study. There are excellent materials under the “Resources” section on the right side of the webpage.

As instructors, we talk a lot about plagiarism, but we may not follow up with concrete examples of what it is and how to avoid it. Threatening students with a bad grade or expulsion may be a deterrent to plagiarism, but education is even better. Send your students to the Plagiarism Resource Site to give them the information they need.

Online Subscriptions

If you’re like me, you have lots of e-mail to sort through every morning. Some e-mails bring good news, some bring additional work. We may not, however, get many e-mails that focus directly on our jobs as teachers. To remedy that situation, today I’m going to suggest a couple of on-line subscriptions to teach us new ways of reaching our students and give us something to think about.

The first resource is Faculty Focus. This newsletter is published three times a week and has a variety of topics for those in higher education. Some of the topics that are discussed are educational assessment, learning styles, distance learning, online education and more. The articles are archived on the site. The only problem with this site is that there isn’t enough time to read all of the articles that sound interesting!

The second resource is On Course. The e-mails from Skip Downing always include a teaching strategy or activity. At the main webpage, move down to the On Course Newsletter.  The annual conference is highly publicized in the e-mail, too, but if you’re not interested, just move down to the activity. (The conference, by the way, is one of the best I’ve ever attended.) The activities are archived on the On Course website. They are divided into the topics of getting on course (being a good teacher and student); self-responsibility, self-motivation, self-management, interdependence, self-awareness, lifelong learning, emotional intelligence, self-esteem, and staying on course. The activities vary in complexity and effectiveness, but they will get you thinking about what you can do to engage students in the class.

If you sign up for these resources, you’ll have something to look forward to. If you find you just don’t have the time or interest in them, you can always unsubscribe.

The Wide World of MERLOT

The online website MERLOT offers a great deal of food for the teaching (and learning) soul. MERLOT, which stands for Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, is a user-centered, peer-reviewed website that has was created to share academic technological needs. What started as a small consortium has grown into one of the best online resources for educators.


Different areas are showcased on the MERLOT website. The Pedagogy Portal and its categories of learners and learning, course design, teaching strategies, teaching challenges, and assessments all contain case studies, research, and tips for becoming a better instructor. Each category offers a great deal of information. The Online/Hybrid Courses section of the Teaching Strategies strand, for example, has links to sites that discuss how to structure effective online discussions, chats, and general tips for success.

MERLOT’s Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) advertises that it’s had over 90,000 visits in the past year. The journal, which is a free publication, is a great resource, especially for those teaching online. Research papers, case studies, and position papers are part of the quarterly journal in addition to the themed articles. The deadline for the Fall 2010 edition is in May, so if you’re interested in sharing your experiences or research, check out JOLT.

While the showcased areas and journal provide a plethora of information for higher education instructors, the main attraction of MERLOT is the depth of information in the discipline communities. Each discipline community has links that take the educator to a site showing tutorials, collections, reference material, tips for online teaching of the subject, and more. Some of the linked websites have been reviewed by peers. Having many (455 in the English community) available links in one area can be a great timesaver when looking for new ideas.

It will take you more than one sitting to get through all of the material in MERLOT, but it is time well spent.

Online Lectures

I never get tired of web surfing. Some sites are time wasters, some give you new ideas, and some teach. I’d like to share some of the sites that provide lectures and instruction for different topics.

Many universities across the country have free online courses or lectures. These are usually licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution, which allows you to share and adapt the content if you attribute it the way the author has specified. The topics are varied. Do you want to learn French? You might want to sign up for an open course through the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon. Need a little extra money? Why not design an application for the iPhone? The course from Stanford includes the video lectures, PowerPoint slides, and PDFs. It, as well as many other courses can be found on iTunes. (C-language and programming experience are prerequisites for the iPhone Apps class, but there isn’t a shortage of other, less technology-related courses!) Other universities providing entire courses or lectures include Yale, MIT (1900 courses from which to choose), UC Berkeley, and many more. Most of the videos for these courses or lectures can be downloaded from YouTube.

Another interesting source for lectures is TED, which is a nonprofit organization which focuses on Ideas Worth Spreading. Their annual conference is a bit pricey ($6,000), but you can watch many of the lectures that are inspiring, funny, informative, and worth watching. You can also subscribe to TED Talks. For those of you unfamiliar with subscribing, keep watching this blog for more information!
If you want your students to review their calculus, be inspired by a lecture, or just see what it’s like to go to MIT, you might want to guide them to one of these online lectures or courses. For those of us who never tire of learning, these courses and lectures are just what we need.

Learning Styles: The Debate Begins

There have been many discussions about learning styles. Information about different styles and can easily be found on the Internet. Some of the learning styles include Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence, the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, and Dunn & Dunn’s Learning Style Assessment. Although the specifics of each type of learning style assessment differ, the basic idea is that there are basic differences in the ways people perceive and learn.

According to Terry O’Connor in the article “Using Learning Styles to Adapt Technology for Higher Education,” although the theories differ somewhat, there are five conclusions that seem to be constant:

            • Students will learn better when using preferences in which
                  they're successful
            • Students will be better learners when they can expand
                    their preferences
            • When teaching accommodates various preferences, more
                    students will be successful.
            • Teachers can construct activities that include specific
                    (& multiple) learning preferences
            • This can be done by adding alternatives or, completing
                    learning cycles that  incorporate all styles or, by
                    utilizing wholistic, complex tasks.

So do we change the way we teach? Do we need to change the way we teach? According to Daniel T Willingham, in the article “Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?” in the online publication of American Educator, instruction in the various learning styles is not necessary for the following reason:

             Because the vast majority of educational content is stored in
             terms of meaning and does not rely on visual, auditory,
             or kinesthetic memory, it is not surprising that researchers
             have found very little support for the idea that offering
             instruction in a child’s best modality will have a
             positive effect on his learning.

I have always tried to get my students to adapt their own learning to their Intelligence, often without success. I also try to change the way I teach, and have succeeded to some extent some days, but have failed miserably on others. I think we tend to be a lecture-listen society, reverting back to the way we were taught.  We as college instructors may find it difficult to change our approaches to meet the style of our students.
We may also believe that changing our style to fit our students' learning styles is not necessary.

What’s your opinion? Let’s discuss this issue either in the comments area below, or on the EPCC Faculty Development Facebook page.

See you next week!

Bibliography Resources

When having students write a bibliography for their speeches, I often get bibliographic entries such as “google.com,” or “the Internet.” These, my friends, are not bibliographic entries. Even when more information is given, it is often incorrect.

Although some could argue that students need to know the bibliographic form, I am under the belief that our generation of students needs to know how to get the end result rather than emphasizing the process. There are two easy ways for students to write bibliographies. One way is through the use of online resources and the other is through Microsoft Word.

Two of the more popular online bibliographic sources are http://www.bibme.org/ and http://www.citefast.com/. Both sites allow students to enter the information needed to create a bibliography. (Of course, the students need to know the correct information in order to fill out the form!) Bibme has a citation guide so that students can actually learn how to create bibliographic entry as well as enter the information. Students can also create a free account so that their information is saved on the site. Citefast allows students to save their bibliographic entries, but there is no guide to teach them the rules.

Microsoft Word 2007 offers a plethora of reference assistance. By clicking on the “References” tab, information about all types of references can be seen. Students will be best-served by adding the information for their references when they “insert citation.” Then, when they’re finished with their papers or outlines, they can add the bibliography, which has been created using information from the forms. Here is a brief video showing how to use the citation and bibliography features of Word 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DYuUGP7vLg&feature=related. While this doesn’t give a lot of detailed information, it’s enough to get students started.

Students do need to have bibliographies for their work, and having them use these resources could prevent the dreaded “www.wikipedia.com: entries. If these are familiar to you, please pass along the information to someone who is less familiar with them.

Next week: Learning Styles

Starting Your Classroom Facebook Page

Are you on Facebook? Are you having fun finding that guy or gal that rejected you in high school years ago (and hoping they’ve gained lots of extra pounds)? Or are you going to Facebook to play Farkel or farm your land are Farmville? As an educator, you can put your Facebook skills to good use. According to the Top Colleges Blog, http://www.top-colleges.com/blog/2009/11/29/social-networkingacademic/, a recent survey by the Center for Community College Student Engagement which included 400,000 students from 663 colleges, shows that students who use social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to interact with their peers, faculty and other staff, are more likely to succeed then those who do not use social media.

Facebook can be very helpful in a community college where students may not have much “college” interaction outside of classes. The study doesn’t recommend a specific way to building rapport and increase student interaction, but it encourages instructors to work to find the right match for their specific course and group of students.

According to a conference paper by Caroline Lego Munoz and Terri L. Towner,  http://www46.homepage.villanova.edu/john.immerwahr/TP101/Facebook.pdf, you can use Facebook in four different ways. You can create your own profile page and let students be your “friend;” create a group page for each class; replacing or duplicating web course functions, such as discussion boards, instant messaging, or posting information about assignments; and integration of Facebook applications. All of these options allow communication with your students at a different level than is possible in the classroom. One word of caution, however, is to be careful letting students be friends on your personal page. Letting students be a friend is like letting them into your personal life, which you probably do not want to do. Set up a separate class page instead.

How do you set up a Facebook page? Just go to the main Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/.
After signing in, you’ll need to follow the steps given. It’s not very tough to do. Once the page is created, click “Edit page.” There you’ll see information about discussion boards, events, links, notes, videos and photos. My suggestion is to have the students become fans and limit the interactions to the fans so you don’t have a lot of strangers commenting on your page.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? If you’ve tried using Facebook in your classes, let us know how it worked for you. If you have questions, just ask in the comments section below.

See you next week for another technology tip!

Welcome to the EPCC Faculty Development Blog!  This blog was created to help you become more familiar with online resources that focus on teaching and learning.  New online resources will be posted every Thursday and Faculty Development activites will be highlighted during the week.  If you have topic ideas, please leave them in the comments area.  I'd like to know what you'd like to learn more about.  When commenting, please use your name as a sign-in.  You do not need to put a URL.  I can't wait to hear from you!